All For Us

Chapter 1

Eighteen years ago.

The screams of the newborn child were soon drowned out by the pained wails of her mother. The smile fell off of Calt's face. The man had been caught up in the stare of his beautiful baby girl. He turned to his wife, concern etched into his features. 

"Sierra, what's wrong?" he asked the mother of his darling daughter. Sierra opened her mouth to speak but instead pitched forward and emitted an Earth-shattering scream.

She animatedly pointed at the doors and managed the words, "Doctor, Calt. I need the.. Doc-tor." She was panting by the end of it, her face alarmingly pale. 

Calt deposited the child he had yet to put down by that point into the waiting nursery bed and sprinted for the doctor.

"Dr. Clemmings! My wife, she's hurt! Please, come quickly!" Calt practically yelled at the doctor before turning around without waiting for a response and running back towards the sounds of his screaming wife. 

When Calt reached the doorway, he saw that Sierra's face was turning blue and she looked to be waning in strength. Her screams had turned into muted moans of agony. In a blind panic, he dashed to her and reached for her hands, trying to shake the life back into her.

The doctor arrived a moment later with a gaggle of nurses, each of whom took up a different task around Calt's suddenly disturbingly quiet wife. One nurse checked her IV while another felt for a pulse while yet another started CPR. 

"What's happening to her?" Calt demanded, on the verge of hysterics. Dr. Clemmings didn't bother with a response, instead nodding to a nurse who got the unspoken message and attempted to usher Calt out of the room.

"Sir, you need to stand back and let us do our job," the nurse advised Calt. "Your daughter needs you right now," she continued. 

That sent a shock of awareness through Calt. He immediately felt ten kinds of terrible for neglecting his newborn in the midst of the chaos.

He went to run back into the room to retrieve his daughter but was again blocked by the nurse, who then gestured into the room at another nurse to retrieve his daughter. 

Calt took the momentary distraction of the nurse tasked with keeping him out to peer into the room at his wife, who was still having CPR performed on her.

Before he could react, his daughter was shoved into his arms. Enraged at the nurses for using his own child to stifle his movements but unable to do anything other than hold her, he turned away from the room and focused on the girl. 

She was no longer crying, and instead stared up at him with intense blue eyes, so stark they almost glowed. Calt was in rapture of those eyes, and in that moment, he was eternally grateful for his daughter's presence. She was grounding him at a time he needed it most. He felt wholly anchored by the miracle in his arms.

"Mr. Cethian," Dr. Clemmings appeared in the doorway, and when Calt managed to tear his gaze from his daughter's, his heart dropped into his stomach at the grim look on the doctor's face. 

"I'm so sorry. We did everything we could," Dr. Clemmings delivered the blow in a somber tone.

Calt's ears started ringing. He suddenly couldn't hear anything the doctor was saying to him. In a trance, he slowly walked past Dr. Clemmings into his wife's room, towards the bed that now held his prone beloved. 

He simply could not process the sudden turn of events. What had felt like mere moments ago, he, his wife, and his daughter, had been about to start their new life together. Sierra had wanted to wait to name their daughter until they'd had a chance to meet her. And now she would never get to meet her daughter. Never get to name her.

"No," Calt said so quietly he was sure no one heard him. He said it a second time, a little louder. By the third time, he was screaming the word. He broke down beside his wife, reaching for her hand while holding their daughter tightly to him. 

"Sierra," he said her name like a prayer. "Wake up baby. We need to name her. She needs you to give her a name." Calt shook his wife gently, hoping against hope the movement would somehow force the breath back into her lungs.

But he knew it was no use. He knew his wife was gone, not even ten minutes after she'd brought their daughter into the world.

Calt looked down at his daughter, who still did not have a name. "She was supposed to name you," he whispered brokenly while looking into those blue eyes that were the only thing keeping him rooted to this planet. "I don't know what to call you." Calt's voice broke as a sob wracked his body.

He was startled by his daughter giggling. Peals of laughter filled the tense space. He looked at the girl in astonishment, and she laughed again. The sound was so bright, so full of life. Her azure eyes almost shone, so luminescent they reminded him of a star in the pitch black of night. 

A star. That's what his daughter was. Lighting up the dark void her mom had left behind in Calt's heart.

"Astra," Calt said in wonder. Yes. That's what he would call his daughter, giving her a namesake he had no doubt she would one day live up to.